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Mrs Joan Marshall

Mrs Marshall (in the wheelchair) at the Royal Re-opening in 1991. (Photo: David Robinson)

Joan Marshall, former General Manager of the New Basingstoke Canal Co Ltd, died on 15th December 1997, aged 89. Born in Hampshire, she knew and enjoyed the canal from early childhood. After studying art at Reading University, she joined an Oxford Street store in London and became a buyer of soft furnishings. She became actively involved with the canal in 1949 when the 32-mile waterway was put up for auction by the Harmsworth family following the death of Mr A.J.Harmsworth, who purchased it in 1923. Joan Marshall, already an inland waterways enthusiast, joined the Basingstoke Canal Committee, formed by the Inland Waterways Association (IWA), to consider ways of safeguarding the canal following widespread concern over its future as a navigation.

A number of IWA members had offered financial support but the total amounted to only £3,000. On the eve of the auction Mrs Marshall told Robert Aikman who, as founder of the IWA was closely involved, that she could probably find the balance of the price which was expected to be around £10,000. Immediately after the auction Mrs Marshal revealed, much to Aikman's chagrin, that the Purchase Committee was independent of the IWA. In January 1950, Mrs Marshall announced that a Mr S.E.Cooke, a wealthy aeronautical engineer and inventor of a patented fishing reel, was prepared to meet the total price. Joan Marshall was appointed General Manager of the New Basingstoke Canal Co Ltd.

Although disappointed, Aikman acknowledged Mrs Marshall has "stoutly and eloquently supported the right, the constructive, and the imaginative cause".

She did her best to maintain the canal and introduced many local children to the waterway by running boat trips and holding regattas. When she retired in 1964, deterioration of the canal was setting in which prompted the formation of the Surrey & Hampshire Canal Society in 1966.

History will record that Joan Marshall saved the canal, before the restoration movement had started and when infilling was a real, if not practical, alternative.

Joan Marshall leaves a son and two daughters, the younger of whom, Elizabeth, married Tim Dodwell who, as an active IWA member, was involved in the campaign to save the canal.
(by Dieter Jebens)

First published in Waterways World, February 1998.